Filed under: Productivity, Open Source
Open Office v2.0 for Mac OS X Released!
Hooray! Open Office 2.0 for the Macintosh has been released. This'll likely be the last version of Open Office for the Macintosh to run under the X11 environment as the developers have decided to stop developing the X11 version and begin working on a native Aqua version of Open Office as reported here a few weeks ago.
While I don't personally loathe Microsoft Office as much as some of my colleagues, I do think that competition is good. I've finally given up as a lost cause on my secret wish for WordPerfect to be ported over to Mac OS X. It was my hope that Corel would release a version of WordPerfect to compete with Word, or that Apple would release a less anemic version of AppleWorks. But it's never happened.
I'm pleased to see the Open Office team making progress and am happy they've decided to work on a native version. Of course, this version requires you have the X11 environment installed on your Mac, which you can (for Panther users) download or (for Tiger users) install from your Mac OS X Tiger Installer CDs/DVD.
You can download Open Office 2.0 for Mac OS X here.
Note: Technically, this is the 3rd final release candidate and will probably be the final final candidate unless a showstopping bug crops up.
While I don't personally loathe Microsoft Office as much as some of my colleagues, I do think that competition is good. I've finally given up as a lost cause on my secret wish for WordPerfect to be ported over to Mac OS X. It was my hope that Corel would release a version of WordPerfect to compete with Word, or that Apple would release a less anemic version of AppleWorks. But it's never happened.I'm pleased to see the Open Office team making progress and am happy they've decided to work on a native version. Of course, this version requires you have the X11 environment installed on your Mac, which you can (for Panther users) download or (for Tiger users) install from your Mac OS X Tiger Installer CDs/DVD.
You can download Open Office 2.0 for Mac OS X here.
Note: Technically, this is the 3rd final release candidate and will probably be the final final candidate unless a showstopping bug crops up.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Wry Cooter said 12:49PM on 10-24-2005
On a huge portion of the installed macintosh base, Open Office X11 seems like perhaps windows 95 emulated at best. It is creaky slow, ugly as Office has ever been (although some see that as a plus), and pales next to Office 2000 for Mac run in Classic. Perhaps it is because of the Java hooks it has to make for API calls. But as is, it has some way to go to even approach ANY version of Office Microsoft has made for the Mac in the past five years. Native Aqua can only help the effort.
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Charles Gaba said 1:34PM on 10-24-2005
Just curious about your thoughts regarding NeoOffice/J for OS X?
http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/en/index.php
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Joshua Ochs said 2:12PM on 10-24-2005
This is final! Unless it isn't! But our headline will make it sure sound like it is!
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gob said 2:50PM on 10-24-2005
Sweet. OpenOffice is an excellent and, more importantly, free alternative to Word and Friends. I'll wait until NeoOffice/J updates to 2.0 before downloading, but it's good to know that 2.0 is finally out. Or, rather, will be soon.
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Juan de Dios Santander Vela said 5:20PM on 10-24-2005
Well, maybe Pages is in the middle of the Word Processing and the Page Composition camps, but it is also a welcome contestant.
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Steve M said 9:23PM on 10-24-2005
NeoOffice works great on the Mac, and gives you are much more Aqua-ized interface. It also allows more direct import of data than the X version. Highly recommend it.
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B said 1:58AM on 10-26-2005
Version 2.0 touts Base's ability to open .mdb files. I can't get it to work for me. Anyone else have success?
Thanks,
B.
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Andrew Richardson said 10:49AM on 10-29-2005
Almost great but still badly flawed.
I wish someone would sort out the printing system ! On a mac mini with a usb inkjet printer it simply cannot print. It sets off pstopdf which goes into a loop, eating up 95% of processor resources with it, thus locking everything until you kill pstopdf. It's a shame as otherwise it would be wonderful.
If someone knows how to fix this please please do so.
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Sunil R. Joshi said 1:34PM on 10-29-2005
I have added a couple of entries on customizing Openoffice to make it better work with the mac. eg. setting up fonts, customizing the prefs to make it work with mac key board. Check it out if you find it useful.
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Chris said 11:55AM on 11-26-2005
The .mdb open ability is for Windows only.
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